The printed version of the german journal Wirtschfatswoche, edeition of 20th of October 2005 is reporting in short that the Swissman Bertrand Piccard plans to go round the world by a solar airplane in 2010. The wings will be 80 meters wide to get enought surface for the required amount of solar cells. The energy got by those cells will be used to drive two propellers and to charge batteries providing electricity at night.

The cells must be made of a special polymere that can withstand temperatures between -60° C nad +80° C

Despite the large width of the wings the airplane mustn't weigh more than 200 kilograms

To achieve that Researches at Piccards company Solar Impulse are developing new ultra-light composite materials. The project is assitsed or energized by ESA too. The costs are estimated at 40 million Euros.

It will be interesting to know how much lighter SSO could be using such material. Which impacts and consequences the new polymere and solar cells could have on space vehicles and which fornstieres it will push else regarding space.

Under www.welt.de there is an interesting article today about progresses regarding a material not thought of to be applied for space vehicles yet which might be changed perhaps now which should be subject to discussion here. What the material is interesting for generally will be lunar, martian and other planetary stations, habitats and thus colonization also-

The article is talking about concrete and tells that researchers and engineers at the Technische UniversitÃ¤t Dresden have created a concrete shapable and very light. They achieved that by avoiding steel and applying textiles instead. They constructed a bridge in Oschatz 9 meters long and 3 centimeters thick - weighing 5 tons which is a fifth of the same bridge made of steel-concrete. In Kempten there is a similar bridge 17 meters long, 3 centimeters thick and weiging 12 tons.

The weights aren't that much above that of a CXV or a Dragon and the engineers indeed have constructed a submarine also of their new concrete. That submarine is working well.

The article explicitly says that the principle of composites are applied.

According to an article under www.wissenschaft.de from 14th of October this year american and chinese researchers have developed or found an all new material consisting of pure carbon. It consists of tubes with porous walls and their diameter is 1000 times that of carbonnanotubes. Its tensile strength is larger than that of conventional carbonfibers and it is shapable like metals.

And it is extremely light. The tubes are 1.4 micrometers thick and a piece of it as large as a cube of sugar does weigh 0.1 gram only.

It also is said to be bullet-proof - which makes it look to be of interest for another purpose in space...

Scientists have created a semiconductive plastic which they made a transistor of. The plastic is based on Naphtalene and would allow for the production of flexible circuits via an ink jet - think of possible in-space repairs of circuits in deep space...

The circuit or the transistor isworking particularly well but the performance woul have to be increased bya factor of 1000 yet to compete with aluminum.

The article refers to Antonio Facchetti of Polyera in Skokie and BASF in Ludwigshafen/Germany as well as to Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature07727 ( http://www.nature.com/nature ).